Tag: Sears Christmas catalogue

Memory Lane: the Sears Christmas Catalogue

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

See the source image

Another dreary, grey, rainy day–and me without a Sears catalogue.

One of my coziest childhood memories is cuddling up on the sitting room couch with the Sears Christmas catalogue: and there’s no school, because it’s snowing like mad outside.

I felt like Howard Carter peering into Tutankhamen’s tomb, who answered, when asked what he could see, “Things! Wonderful things!” Bikes and pogo sticks. Toy guns and real guns (not much chance of me getting one of those!). Erector sets and plastic models.

But for me the ultimate treasure was the play sets. Like this farm set.

See the source image

I wasn’t much for army men, but oh!–all those cool animals in the farm set. And my Grammy gave it to me for Christmas that year. I still have some of those animals. When I see them, I remember her. And her Christmas tree, every year in the same corner of her living room. I still have a few of her ornaments, too, including the elf who winds up on our tree every year.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t count as holy–unless family, and love, and delight are holy, too. Gifts of God, who is the source of every good gift we’ll ever know.

P.S.–And get a load of those prices! The whole 100-piece farm set for $4.99. I can’t imagine what a toy like that would cost today.

Memory Lane: Bounty from Sears

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

See the source image

During my boyhood, at just about this time every year, we received our Sears-Roebuck Christmas catalogue. Oh, boy! My brother, my sister, and I spent hours and hours marveling at the treasures depicted therein.

My favorites were the various play sets, featuring a whole bunch of little plastic figurines with a nice big setting for them. My brother would have loved the one pictured above! You not only get lots of little cars, but also this wonderful service station plus parking deck.

We had play sets for the Age of Dinosaurs, a farm, Cape Canaveral–you could put your eye out with those spring-launched rockets–an army base, and a three-ring circus.

And look at the price–$4.98 for the whole shootin’ match, or you can get the super-colossal version for $7.98. These items now sell on eBay for hundreds of bucks apiece. I remember when I wanted the dinosaur set and my father said we couldn’t afford it, five dollars was just too much. I wound up getting it for Christmas, and I still have some of the dinosaurs today. (Wish I’d kept those rockets, though!)

Oh, so many play sets! King Arthur and his knights, Ben-Hur and his chariot race, Wagon Train, Fort Apache, the jungle trading post–I used to get off on just reveling in the pictures in the catalogue.

Now, I do realize that such things have nothing whatever to do with Christmas, the real Christmas, but are really just add-ons to express the joy we experience at the birth of Jesus Christ Our Lord. Without Him it’s only a festival of Mammon. We do have to take care, especially with our children, that this is clearly understood. We mustn’t celebrate the gifts; the gifts are a celebration of Christ.

But I will stack up the 1959 Sears Christmas catalogue against any cultural artifact of this present time, and come out way ahead.

Memory Lane: The Sears Roebuck Christmas Catalogue

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Vintage 1959 Sears Roebuck & Company Christmas Wishbook Catalog

When I was a boy, one of the sure signs that Christmas really was coming at last, honest, was the annual Sears Roebuck Christmas Book, better known as the Sears Catalogue.

How I loved to pore over this enormous thick book! It was as thick as the phone book, but with dozens of captivating pictures on each and every page. Of course, I rushed through the long and tedious sections on clothes and bedding and the like, lingered over the guns–real guns, not toys–and then, aaah! The toy section. El Dorado!

My favorites were the play sets, consisting mostly of little plastic figures of animals and people. Pictured in the catalogue, all set up and ready to go, I could just groove on these for hours–imagining myself imagining all kinds of adventures for these little characters, once I got them. The farm set! The circus! The African safari! Not to mention pirates, army men, cowboys and Indians, and, one of the best ever, Cape Canaveral with spring-launched rockets that made a gloriously loud “bonk!” if you shot them into the ceiling. And the sheer ecstasy of finding the dinosaur play set under the tree on Christmas morning–!

Image result for images of marx dinosaur playset

Some of the gang from the dinosaur play set

I understand, now, what it meant: that my mother and father, grandparents, aunts and uncles, loved the living dickens out of me and all the other child-kin and delighted in seeing our faces light up when we got those gifts.

In that sense, those gifts continue to give, to this day.

And if love and giving and joy are not the way to celebrate Our Savior Jesus Christ, I don’t know what is.